Hostage Heart

by Renee Roszel

  Somehow, the brief gap of time before the final word was less than reassuring, and Drew found herself chewing painfully at the inside of her cheek.

  A short time later their commercial jetliner was touching down on a long, snow-cleared runway. The little jet fighters, which several of the passengers had referred to as “MiGs,” zipped overhead in close formation. Drew had been sitting in a numbed silence until touchdown brought her back to the present. She cocked her head to the side to get one last glimpse of the hornet-like MiGs as they sped away, sparkling silver specks in the wide blue of an East German sky.

  THE sixty-one passengers and seven crew members were moved quickly off the plane into a cement-block building by a dozen or so armed, grim-faced soldiers in gray. Upon entering, one rather stout officer demanded in German and then in halting English that they hand over their passports and be seated on long, pewlike benches that stood in rows within the large room.

  Hours dragged by. The room, heated by steam, was growing warm with the press of humanity. Earlier Drew had removed her white faux lamb jacket. And now her soft gray cashmere sweater and slacks were becoming uncomfortable.

  She looked at her watch again, her only pastime for what had seemed like an eternity. Nearly 5:00 P.M., she noted with a heavy exhalation of breath, her nerves wound taut. Feeling the need to do something, anything, she stood and stretched.

  Glancing around the crowded room, she noticed the minister, her seatmate on the plane, sitting alone near a frost-covered window. With a sudden urgent need to talk to someone, she crossed to stand before him. “Reverend?”

  “My dear”—he seemed to want to talk too—“call me Norman. . .Norman Peabody. Join me, please.” He patted the rough bench beside him.

  “My Margaret and Sarah are being questioned now. They wouldn’t take us all together, but Mama wouldn’t allow them to take her baby alone. She’s got spunk, my Margaret.” He smiled weakly. “I know this is only a formality, but these Communists see treachery behind every stone.”

  Drew felt a surge of compassion for the man and sat down, putting her hand over his. “They seem to be taking us in alphabetical order.” She leaned back against the rough wall. It felt cool through her sweater. “Six hours to get to the P’s. Well,” she sighed, “it’ll be my turn soon. Would you mind telling me what they ask?”

  He lifted his hand from hers and began to count off on his short fingers: “First, your name. . .where you’re going, where you’ve been. . .if the trip is business or pleasure. . .” He stopped and looked up at her as his face crinkled into a half-hearted grin at a sudden thought. “You know, I’m surprised they didn’t just come right out and ask if I’m a spy and if I conjured up that storm to. . .” His words fell away in midsentence as the heavy door opened and a guard entered with his wife and daughter. They looked like plump bookends, both bundled up in heavy dark serge coats, the younger woman a chubby copy of her mother.

  Reverend Peabody stood abruptly and hurried to his family. Drew’s thoughts turned inward. Only a few questions. I can handle that. Just keep calm, Drew, keep calm.

  She stiffened at the sound of her name being called. “Frau Pollard!” repeated the officer in charge, more loudly this time.

  Drew felt a brief weakness in her knees as she stood and moved to retrieve her jacket. Donning it, she pulled the white-furred hood up over her auburn hair and walked with feet of lead to the guard at the door.

  The blunt-nosed soldier jerked his head toward the exit in a gesture for her to precede him. After tugging the door wide, Drew plunged bare hands into her pockets and stepped out into the frigid, late afternoon. Clouds had moved in, obscuring the sun and giving the daylight a gray shroud of doom. Drew picked her way cautiously across twenty-five yards of crunchy, trampled snow ahead of the sullen guard to a second cement-block building. Mounting five ice-sheeted steps, they entered heavy double doors and turned down a dimly lit corridor, their footsteps echoing hollowly on the worn floor. The guard stopped abruptly before a door and knocked. Shortly, a brusque reply admitted them both. Closing the portal, the soldier posted himself and gestured for Drew to go forward. The room was unusually dark for early evening. But Drew guessed that this was purposeful and psychological. She bit her lip tentatively, desperately wanting this interview to be over. Her heart thudded in her temples and she gritted her teeth. Keep calm! her mind ordered. Steeling herself to remain rational, and in an effort to keep a sense of proportion, she glanced around, taking mental notes. There was a metal desk behind which sat a spectacled man in uniform, an officer, Drew guessed. And to her far left stood another man, his arms folded casually before him. Whether by design or by accident this quiet stranger had positioned himself before the room’s only window, almost filling it with his wide shoulders. The light from the nearly sunless sky illuminated the crystalline frost on the panes at his back, leaving his darkened face featureless. Something about the silent alertness of this silhouetted figure sent an intense shiver of apprehension up Drew’s spine.

  The officer sitting behind the desk barked in heavily accented English, “You are American?”

  Drew blinked her eyes back to him. A single lamp burned low on the desk, its light directed down on the passport in his hand, her passport. “Yes,” she whispered and gulped to ease the dryness in her throat.

  He adjusted his dark-rimmed glasses and spoke, his voice acid-filled, “Sit down!”

  The words were a nasal order. Startled by the abruptness of his shouted demand, she moved quickly to the only vacant chair in the room, directly across the desk from the questioning officer.

  “Your name?” came the officer’s brusque query.

  “Drew McKenna,” was her automatic response, not having used her married name in nearly a year.

  The seated man looked pointedly up, his brows drawn down in a frowning V. “That is not what is written here.” He picked up a pen and began to make a note on a pad at his elbow.

  “Pollard! Drew—Mrs. James Pollard,” Drew stuttered, shaken by her fright-induced witlessness. “You see, McKenna is my mai—middle name.”

  A deep voice from the silhouetted figure by the window cut across Drew’s explanation as he spoke in clipped German to the officer at the desk. Drew turned toward the man cloaked in darkness. He appeared to be the one in actual command here and she was puzzled by their tactics.

  “Ja, mein Herr,” replied the officer as he returned the pen to the desk top, abandoning his note-taking. Turning back to Drew, the subdued officer went on with the required questions. “Mrs. Pollard, you were in Berlin for business?”

  Breathing a slow sigh of relief that her slip had seemingly been ignored, she answered, “No, to visit a close friend and her husband, and to see their new baby.”

  So it went, the routine questions were ground out. Drew, without hesitation, answered them all, for there was nothing for Mrs. James Pollard to hide.

  “That will be all, Frau Pollard. You will now be returned to the others.” He looked down at her passport, slapped the covers together and laid it aside. Having been so completely dismissed, Drew rose to go. As she did, the shadowed figure before the window walked silently forward, addressing the seated officer.

  “Ja, Herr Erhardt.” The spectacled officer rose to rigid attention and gave a curt nod as the man from the shadows strode to the door where Drew and the bulky guard waited. He stood aside as the guard opened the door and preceded them both out of the small office.

  Once in the hall, the tall man spoke in English, his low, gravel-edged voice held a slight but pleasing accent, “Your husband is not traveling with you, Mrs. Pollard?”

  Startled by the odd query, Drew turned to face the questioning man. For the first time she realized how very tall he was, much taller than most of the men she knew—six foot five, maybe six six. Drew, five seven herself, found very few men whom she considered to be really tall. But this man—she looked up into his face. Lit by one stark bulb above their heads, his features appeared ruggedly angular.
The hollows of his lean face were black beneath the high wide bones along his cheeks. Thick lashes framed deep-set eyes, leaving Drew to wonder if he was scowling down at her or at some point beyond her head. She stiffened. “I really see no valid reason for your asking that question.”

  The tall man’s expression did not change, but Drew thought she could see a flicker somewhere in the darkness that held his eyes. “Mrs. Pollard, any questions that we care to ask must be considered valid. I suggest that you remember that. You are not in your precious United States now.”

  Drew swallowed hard, remembering that her situation was perhaps more precarious than most. “My husband and I are divorced.” She let the statement fall flat for she had no taste for discussing it, or even remembering.

  There was an almost imperceptible tensing across the broad shoulders. The stranger at her side issued a command to the guard standing quietly at Drew’s back. She heard a click of heels and turned to see her guard disappear out of the double doors through which they had entered earlier.

  She turned back to the tall man at her side, puzzled. Why had he sent her guard away? Drew searched the darkness that held his eyes. Though she could not see them, she was very aware of his close observation of her. What did he want with her, this tall enigmatic stranger? He was no soldier as suggested by the civilian clothes he wore. A red plaid shirt-jacket fit snugly over wide shoulders, tapering to a narrow, flat-bellied waist. She was surprised to see that he wore a pair of snug-fitting blue jeans that molded themselves closely to his muscular thighs.

  Jeans, Drew knew, were very difficult for East Germans to get. And even when they were able to acquire them, they were usually prohibitively expensive. Yet this man, even behind the Iron Curtain, was dressed like a casual American. Ironically, he was anything but that, this German. For Drew had seen the way these Communist soldiers snapped to at his command. Yes. Though it was not clear to Drew what it was, this. . .Herr Erhardt obviously held an exalted position of command here.

  “Come!” His low growl interrupted her thoughts. He grasped her arm roughly, pulling her along the darkened corridor, back in the opposite direction from which Drew had entered.

  “Where—” she began, but his “Quiet!” whispered under his breath, held a dangerous undercurrent.

  Keeping her silence, she walked, almost ran, being dragged along at his long-legged pace until they reached a set of narrow stairs. Descending, they moved through a nondescript metal door. Once outside, Drew could see an iron gate, guarded by an armed soldier in gray.

  The red-jacketed man exchanged a few low-pitched words with the guard who smiled and nodded, eyeing Drew with interest as he readily opened the gate, allowing them both to leave the compound area.

  She was briskly deposited in the front seat of a jeep-like automobile. The tall man took the wheel, ignited the motor, and they sped away.

  “I demand that you tell me where I’m being taken! You have no—”

  He interrupted her shrill demand curtly. “Once again, Mrs. Pollard, I must remind you that you have no rights at all.”

  He flicked on a set of windshield wipers, clearing a wide V across the front window as snow began to fall.

  Drew turned to look at his rigid profile. His face was set in a dark mask. A muscle twitching near his jaw was the only sign that he was not carved from granite.

  He seemed agitated, angry—intent, but on what? Was it only the ice-sheeted winding road that they skimmed over in the growing dusk that demanded his rigid attention? Or was it something more?

  A nagging fear squeezed Drew’s stomach. She grasped the dark vinyl of the seat unconsciously and turned her eyes away from his face.

  Her mind whirled with fearsome thoughts as she stared ahead, watching the hypnotic to-and-fro movement of the wipers as they worked in a futile attempt to rid the window of the falling snow.

  Suddenly, he braked the jeep to a skidding stop and jumped out with the natural grace of a jungle cat.

  Drew had braced her hands against the dashboard at the sudden stop and was more than a little surprised to see that they were parked before a rustic stone cottage set back from the road among towering pines.

  A light scattering of flakes filtered listlessly down among the thickly needled branches, settling across the tall man’s shoulders and in the brown curls of his hair as he turned to face her. “Well, get out, Mrs. Pollard!”

  Drew jumped at his growl and pushed open her door, climbing out into the ankle-deep snow. She shuffled as quickly as she could to catch up to his receding back, not trusting him, yet unable to disobey his order. Once inside, Drew discarded her coat absently on a chair by the door. She looked about her noting that they had entered a well- kept, masculine den. At the far end of the room stood a brown stone hearth, a fire glowing low in its depths. An antique clock sat on the mantel, its pendulum ticking out the seconds with singular importance.

  On either side of the old oaken clock stood a collection of fine beer steins. Some, Drew guessed, must have dated back over one hundred years.

  Before the fire a snowy sheepskin rug covered an age-darkened pine floor. It separated the fireplace from a low heavy table and a rust-colored couch and chair.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Pollard.” Drew moved her eyes quickly to the origin of the command. He stood before a door near the hearth. Opening it, he stepped out, closing the door at his back.

  Drew stood, her eyes remaining where the man had been. She did not move. She was unwilling to sit, yet unsure whether to attempt to escape.

  Before she made up her mind which route to take, the door opened, carrying with it a burst of icy wind, a flutter of new snow, and. . .Herr Erhardt. In his arms he carried a stack of snow-covered wood.

  Drew found her voice. “What is all this? Why have you brought me here?”

  He stopped at the sound of her questions and looked her up and down with a disconcerting masculine thoroughness. Then with a nudge of one broad shoulder, he pushed the pine door closed at his back.

  Without acknowledging her, he fed the dying fire, filling the room with the angry hiss of melting snow. When fire had won over ice and it was pleasantly blazing, he straightened and turned back to face her, leaning casually against the hearth’s stone mantel.

  “Sit down.” His voice held the tone of command that demanded obedience.

  Drew stiffened and set her jaw stubbornly. “No! Not until I know why you brought me here.”

  She remained standing, willing herself not to show this man her gnawing fear.

  A spark flickered to life in his brown eyes, oddly golden in the room’s semi-darkness. Those glowing eyes somehow frightened Drew more than his menacing frown.

  “If you are unwilling, or unable to seat yourself, Mrs. Pollard, I am sure that I can find a way to lower you to the couch,” he stated curtly. Then more quietly, as if reasoning with a witless child, “Or is your safe release, and that of your fellow passengers, of no importance to you?”

  Drew ground her teeth in an effort to find a stinging retort to his condescending question. But she could not.

  “Yes. . .of course it is.”

  Feeling at a loss, she relinquished her determined stance and sat down dejectedly on the sofa. When seated, she laced her fingers together in her lap to keep them from trembling and turned her face up to his, waiting.

  He appeared to be studying his captive passively. Then, after a moment, in a verbal surprise attack, he dropped the revelation like a hand grenade.

  “I know who your father is.”

  The world bottomed out for Drew. “Father!” She gulped at the sudden raspy dryness in her mouth. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”

  His lips opened in a humorless smile. “Very good, Mrs. Pollard. But, your slip in the interrogation room gave you away.”

  Drew could feel the blood drain from her face. She couldn’t speak. Wide gray eyes faced hard brown ones for a moment of heart-thudding silence. The pressure-cooker quiet became too much for Drew. “But how? How did
you pick up on the name so quickly?”

  “It doesn’t require a genius to connect the name of ‘Drew McKenna Pollard’ to that of ‘Dr. Drew McKenna,’ now does it?”

  Drew was not convinced. She shook her head in confusion, russet wisps of fire-lit hair dancing along her cheeks.

  “His name is not that well known, except in the scientific community. How would you know of him unless”,—she had a sudden thought—“unless—” Her eyes flew back up to his face. He did not speak, but merely watched her as realization struck. “Erhardt,” she breathed quietly. “Erhardt—Dr. Rolf Erhardt! So that’s it? That’s how you knew.” Her voice trailed away at the magnitude of her new knowledge.

  He nodded crisply at her mention of his name. “I’m gratified to know that my work has been recognized in the United States.”

  Recognized! Drew’s mind whirled as she remembered her father speaking with obvious respect for his Communist counterpart. The young East German genius, Rolf Erhardt and his amazing strides forward in the field of fusion reactors. Drew put it all together—why their plane had been diverted and forced to land, why the jet was being searched for photographic equipment, and why their film was being confiscated. Dr. Rolf Erhardt, though only thirty-five, was director of the DDR—Institute of Plastics Research located on a secret base in East Germany. Their jet, Drew was now sure, had inadvertently breached the security of that highly classified research installation. She felt herself shudder as the full impact of what was happening to her struck like a heavy blow.

  “Your presence here will be considered an act of espionage.” Though he had spoken quietly. Drew again felt as though she had been hit. She felt a fist tighten in her chest, squeezing. With great effort, she said, “But—but that’s crazy. It was a random chance thing. . .a storm!”